VI

Sebastiano took his arm from Lucrezia's waist as Hermione came down to

the terrace, and said:

"Buona sera, signora. Is the signore coming down yet?"

He flung out his arm towards the mountain.

"I don't know, Sebastiano. Why?"

"I've come with a message for him."

"Not for Lucrezia?"

Sebastiano laughed boldly, but Lucrezia, blushing red, disappeared into

the kitchen.

"Don't play with her, Sebastiano," said Hermione. "She's a good girl."

"I know that, signora."

"She deserves to be well treated."

Sebastiano went over to the terrace wall, looked into the ravine, turned

round, and came back.

"Who's treating Lucrezia badly, signora?"

"I did not say anybody was."

"The girls in Marechiaro can take care of themselves, signora. You don't

know them as I do."

"D'you think any woman can take care of herself, Sebastiano?"

He looked into her face and laughed, but said nothing. Hermione sat down.

She had a desire to-day, after Lucrezia's conversation with her, to get

at the Sicilian man's point of view in regard to women.

"Don't you think women want to be protected?" she asked.

"What from, signora?"

There was still laughter in his eyes.

"Not from us, anyway," he added. "Lucrezia there--she wants me for her

husband. All Marechiaro knows it."

Hermione felt that under the circumstances it was useless to blush for

Lucrezia, useless to meet blatant frankness with sensitive delicacy.

"Do you want Lucrezia for your wife?" she said.

"Well, signora, I'm strong. A stick or a knife in my hand and no man can

touch me. You've never seen me do the scherma con coltello? One day I'll

show you with Gaspare. And I can play better even than the men from

Bronte on the ceramella. You've heard me. Lucrezia knows I can have any

girl I like."

There was a simplicity in his immense superiority to women that robbed it

of offensiveness and almost made Hermione laugh. In it, too, she felt the

touch of the East. Arabs had been in Sicily and left their traces there,

not only in the buildings of Sicily, but in its people's songs, and in

the treatment of the women by the men.

"And are you going to choose Lucrezia?" she asked, gravely.

"Signora, I wasn't sure. But yesterday, I had a letter from Messina. They

want me there. I've got a job that'll pay me well to go to the Lipari

Islands with a cargo."

"Are you a sailor, too?"

"Signora, I can do anything."

"And will you be long away?"

"Who knows, signora? But I told Lucrezia to-day, and when she cried I

told her something else. We are 'promised.'"

"I am glad," Hermione said, holding out her hand to him.

He took it in an iron grip.

"Be very good to her when you're married, won't you?"

"Oh, she'll be all right with me," he answered, carelessly. "And I won't

give her the slap in the face on the wedding-day."

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

There was a shrill cry from the mountain and Maurice and Gaspare came

leaping down, scattering the stones, the revolvers still in their hands.

"Look, signora, look!" cried Gaspare, pulling a sheet of paper from his

pocket and holding it proudly up. "Do you see the holes? One, two,

three--"

He began to count.

"And I made five. Didn't I, signore?"

"You're a dead shot, Gasparino. Did you hear us, Hermione?"

"Yes," she said. "But you didn't hear me."

"You? Did you call?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Sebastiano's got a message for you," Hermione said.

She could not tell him now the absurd impulse that had made her call him.

"What's the message, Sebastiano?" asked Maurice, in his stumbling

Sicilian-Italian that was very imperfect, but that nevertheless had

already the true accent of the peasants about Marechiaro.

"Signore, there will be a moon to-night."

"Già. Lo so."

"Are you sleepy, signorino?"

He touched his eyes with his sinewy hands and made his face look drowsy.

Maurice laughed.

"No."

"Are you afraid of being naked in the sea at night? But you need not

enter it. Are you afraid of sleeping at dawn in a cave upon the sands?"

"What is it all?" asked Maurice. "Gaspare, I understand you best."

"I know," said Gaspare, joyously. "It's the fishing. Nito has sent. I

told him to. Is it Nito, Sebastiano?"

Sebastiano nodded. Gaspare turned eagerly to Maurice.

"Oh, signore, you must come, you will come!"

"Where? In a boat?"

"No. We go down to the shore, to Isola Bella. We take food, wine, red

wine, and a net. Between twenty-two and twenty-three o'clock is the time

to begin. And the sea must be calm. Is the sea calm to-day, Sebastiano?"

"Like that."

Sebastiano moved his hand to and fro in the air, keeping it absolutely

level. Gaspare continued to explain with gathering excitement and

persuasiveness, talking to his master as much by gesture as by the words

that Maurice could only partially understand.

"The sea is calm. Nito has the net, but he will not go into the sea. Per

Dio, he is birbante. He will say he has the rheumatism, I know, and walk

like that." (Gaspare hobbled to and fro before them, making a face of

acute suffering.) "He has asked for me. Hasn't Nito asked for me,

Sebastiano?"

Here Gaspare made a grimace at Sebastiano, who answered, calmly:

"Yes, he has asked for you to come with the padrone."

"I knew it. Then I shall undress. I shall take one end of the net while

Nito holds the other, and I shall go out into the sea. I shall go up to

here." (He put his hands up to his chin, stretching his neck like one

avoiding a rising wave.) "And I shall wade, you'll see!--and if I come to

a hole I shall swim. I can swim for hours, all day if I choose."

"And all night too?" said Hermione, smiling at his excitement.

"Davvero! But at night I must drink wine to keep out the cold. I come out

like this." (He shivered violently, making his teeth chatter.) "Then I

drink a glass and I am warm, and when they have taken the fish I go in

again. We fish all along the shore from Isola Bella round by the point

there, where there's the Casa delle Sirene, and to the caves beyond the

Caffè Berardi. And when we've got enough--many fish--at dawn we sleep on

the sand. And when the sun is up Carmela will take the fish and make a

frittura, and we all eat it and drink more wine, and then--"

"And then--you're ready for the Campo Santo?" said Hermione.

"No, signora. Then we will dance the tarantella, and come home up the

mountain singing, 'O sole mio!' and 'A mezzanotte a punto,' and the song

of the Mafioso, and--"

Hermione began to laugh unrestrainedly. Gaspare, by his voice, his face,

his gestures, had made them assist at a veritable orgie of labor,

feasting, sleep, and mirth, all mingled together and chasing one another

like performers in a revel. Even his suggestion of slumber on the sands

was violent, as if they were to sleep with a kind of fury of excitement

and determination.

"Signora!" he cried, staring as if ready to be offended.

Then he looked at Maurice, who was laughing, too, threw himself back

against the wall, opened his mouth, and joined in with all his heart. But

suddenly he stopped. His face changed, became very serious.

"I may go, signora?" he asked. "No one can fish as I can. The others will

not go in far, and they soon get cold and want to put on their clothes.

And the padrone! I must take care of the padrone! Guglielmo, the

contadino, will sleep in the house, I know. Shall I call him? Guglielmo!

Guglielmo!"

He vanished like a flash, they scarcely knew in what direction.

"He's alive!" exclaimed Maurice. "By Jove, he's alive, that boy!

Glorious, glorious life! Oh, there's something here that--"

He broke off, looked down at the broad sea shimmering in the sun, then

said:

"The sun, the sea, the music, the people, the liberty--it goes to my

head, it intoxicates me."

"You'll go to-night?" she said.

"D'you mind if I do?"

"Mind? No. I want you to go. I want you to revel in this happy time, this

splendid, innocent, golden time. And to-morrow we'll watch for you,

Lucrezia and I, watch for you down there on the path. But--you'll bring

us some of the fish, Maurice? You won't forget us?"

"Forget you!" he said. "You shall have all--"

"No, no. Only the little fish, the babies that Carmela rejects from the

frittura."

"I'll go into the sea with Gaspare," said Maurice.

"I'm sure you will, and farther out even than he does."

"Ah, he'll never allow that. He'd swim to Africa first!"

That night, at twenty-one o'clock, Hermione and Lucrezia stood under the

arch, and watched Maurice and Gaspare springing down the mountain-side as

if in seven-leagued boots. Soon they disappeared into the darkness of the

ravine, but for some time their loud voices could be heard singing

lustily:

"Ciao, ciao, ciao,

Morettina bella ciao,

Prima di partire

Un bacio ti voglio da';

Un bacio al papà,

Un bacio alla mammà,

Cinquanta alla mia fidanzata,

Che vado a far solda'."

"I wish I were a man, Lucrezia," said Hermione, when the voices at length

died away towards the sea.

"Signora, we were made for the men. They weren't made for us. But I like

being a girl."

"To-night. I know why, Lucrezia."

And then the padrona and the cameriera sat down together on the terrace

under the stars, and talked together about the man the cameriera loved,

and his exceeding glory.

Meanwhile, Maurice and Gaspare were giving themselves joyously to the

glory of the night. The glamour of the moon, which lay full upon the

terrace where the two women sat, was softened, changed to a shadowy

magic, in the ravine where the trees grew thickly, but the pilgrims did

not lower their voices in obedience to the message of the twilight of the

night. The joy of life which was leaping within them defied the subtle

suggestions of mystery, was careless because it was triumphant, and all

the way down to the sea they sang, Gaspare changing the song when it

suited his mood to do so; and Maurice, as in the tarantella, imitating

him with the swiftness that is born of sympathy. For to-night, despite

their different ages, ranks, ways of life, their gayety linked them

together, ruled out the differences, and made them closely akin, as they

had been in Hermione's eyes when they danced upon the terrace. They did

not watch the night. They were living too strongly to be watchful. The

spirit of the dancing faun was upon them, and guided them down among the

rocks and the olive-trees, across the Messina road, white under the moon,

to the stony beach of Isola Bella, where Nito was waiting for them with

the net.

Nito was not alone. He had brought friends of his and of Gaspare's, and a

boy who staggered proudly beneath a pannier filled with bread and cheese,

oranges and apples, and dark blocks of a mysterious dolce. The

wine-bottles were not intrusted to him, but were in the care of Giulio,

one of the donkey-boys who had carried up the luggage from the station.

Gaspare and his padrone were welcomed with a lifting of hats, and for a

moment there was a silence, while the little group regarded the

"Inglese" searchingly. Had Maurice felt any strangeness, any aloofness,

the sharp and sensitive Sicilians would have at once been conscious of

it, and light-hearted gayety might have given way to gravity, though not

to awkwardness. But he felt, and therefore showed, none. His soft hat

cocked at an impudent angle over his sparkling, dark eyes, his laughing

lips, his easy, eager manner, and his pleasant familiarity with Gaspare

at once reassured everybody, and when he cried out, "Ciao, amici, ciao!"

and waved a pair of bathing drawers towards the sea, indicating that he

was prepared to be the first to go in with the net, there was a general

laugh, and a babel of talk broke forth--talk which he did not fully

understand, yet which did not make him feel even for a moment a stranger.

Gaspare at once took charge of the proceedings as one born to be a leader

of fishermen. He began by ordering wine to be poured into the one glass

provided, placed it in Maurice's hand, and smiled proudly at his pupil's

quick "Alla vostra salute!" before tossing it off. Then each one in turn,

with an "Alla sua salute!" to Maurice, took a drink from the great,

leather bottle; and Nito, shaking out his long coil of net, declared that

it was time to get to work.

Gaspare cast a sly glance at Maurice, warning him to be prepared for a

comedy, and Maurice at once remembered the scene on the terrace when

Gaspare had described Nito's "birbante" character, and looked out for

rheumatics.

"Who goes into the sea, Nito?" asked Gaspare, very seriously.

Nito's wrinkled and weather-beaten face assumed an expression of

surprise.

"Who goes into the sea!" he ejaculated. "Why, don't we all know who likes

wading, and can always tell the best places for the fish?"

He paused, then as Gaspare said nothing, and the others, who had received

a warning sign from him, stood round with deliberately vacant faces, he

added, clapping Gaspare on the shoulder, and holding out one end of the

net:

"Off with your clothes, compare, and we will soon have a fine frittura

for Carmela."

But Gaspare shook his head.

"In summer I don't mind. But this is early in the year, and, besides--"

"Early in the year! Who told me the signore distinto would--"

"And besides, compare, I've got the stomach-ache."

He deftly doubled himself up and writhed, while the lips of the others

twitched with suppressed amusement.

"Comparedro, I don't believe it!"

"Haven't I, signorino?" cried Gaspare, undoubling himself, pointing to

his middleman, and staring hard at Maurice.

"Si, si! È vero, è vero!" cried Maurice.

"I've been eating Zampaglione, and I am full. If I go into the sea

to-night I shall die."

"Mamma mia!" ejaculated Nito, throwing up his hands towards the stars.

He dared not give the lie to the "signore distinto," yet he had no trust

in Gaspare's word, and had gained no sort of conviction from his eloquent

writhings.

"You must go in, Nito," said Gaspare.

"I--Madonna!"

"Why not?"

"Why not?" cried Nito, in a plaintive whine that was almost feminine. "I

go into the sea with my rheumatism!"

Abruptly one of his legs gave way, and he stood before them in a crooked

attitude.

"Signore," he said to Maurice. "I would go into the sea, I would stay

there all night, for I love it, but Dr. Marini has forbidden me to enter

it. See how I walk!"

And he began to hobble up and down exactly as Gaspare had on the terrace,

looking over his shoulder at Maurice all the time to see whether his

deception was working well. Gaspare, seeing that Nito's attention was for

the moment concentrated, slipped away behind a boat that was drawn up on

the beach; and Maurice, guessing what he was doing, endeavored to make

Nito understand his sympathy.

"Molto forte--molto dolore?" he said.

"Si, signore!"

And Nito burst forth into a vehement account of his sufferings,

accompanied by pantomime.

"It takes me in the night, signore! Madonna, it is like rats gnawing at

my legs, and nothing will stop it. Pancrazia--she is my wife,

signore--Pancrazia, she gets out of bed and she heats oil to rub it on,

but she might as well put it on the top of Etna for all the good it does

me. And there I lie like a--"

"Hi--yi--yi--yi--yi!"

A wild shriek rent the air, and Gaspare, clad in a pair of bathing

drawers, bounded out from behind the boat, gave Nito a cuff on the cheek,

executed some steps of the tarantella, whirled round, snatched up one end

of the net, and cried:

"Al mare, al mare!"

Nito's rheumatism was no more. His bent leg straightened itself as if by

magic, and he returned Gaspare's cuff by an affectionate slap on his bare

shoulder, exclaiming to Maurice:

"Isn't he terribile, signore? Isn't he terribile?"

Nito lifted up the other end of the net and they all went down to the

shore.

That night it seemed to Delarey as if Sicily drew him closer to her

breast. He did not know why he had now for the first time the sensation

that at last he was really in his natural place, was really one with the

soil from which an ancestor of his had sprung, and with the people who

had been her people. That Hermione's absence had anything to do with his

almost wild sense of freedom did not occur to him. All he knew was this,

that alone among these Sicilian fishermen in the night, not understanding

much of what they said, guessing at their jokes, and sharing in their

laughter, without always knowing what had provoked it, he was perfectly

at home, perfectly happy.

Gaspare went into the sea, wading carefully through the silver waters,

and Maurice, from the shore, watched his slowly moving form, taking a

lesson which would be useful to him later. The coast-line looked

enchanted in the glory of the moon, in the warm silence of the night, but

the little group of men upon the shore scarcely thought of its

enchantment. They felt it, perhaps, sometimes faintly in their gayety,

but they did not savor its wonder and its mystery as Hermione would have

savored them had she been there.

The naked form of Gaspare, as he waded far out in the shallow sea, was

like the form of a dream creature rising out of waves of a dream. When he

called to them across the silver surely something of the magic of the

night was caught and echoed in his voice. When he lifted the net, and its

black and dripping meshes slipped down from his ghostly hands into the

ghostly movement that was flickering about him, and the circles tipped

with light widened towards sea and shore, there was a miracle of delicate

and fantastic beauty delivered up tenderly like a marvellous gift to the

wanderers of the dark hours. But Sicily scarcely wonders at Sicily.

Gaspare was intent only on the catching of fish, and his companions smote

the night with their jokes and their merry, almost riotous laughter.

The night wore on. Presently they left Isola Bella, crossed a stony spit

of land, and came into a second and narrower bay, divided by a turmoil

of jagged rocks and a bold promontory covered with stunted olive-trees,

cactus, and seed-sown earth plots, from the wide sweep of coast that

melted into the dimness towards Messina. Gathered together on the little

stones of the beach, in the shadow of some drawn-up fishing-boats, they

took stock of the fish that lay shining in the basket, and broke their

fast on bread and cheese and more draughts from the generous wine-bottle.

Gaspare was dripping, and his thin body shook as he gulped down the wine.

"Basta Gaspare!" Maurice said to him. "You mustn't go in any more."

"No, no, signore, non basta! I can fish all night. Once the wine has

warmed me, I can--"

"But I want to try it."

"Oh, signore, what would the signora say? You are a stranger. You will

take cold, and then the signora will blame me and say I did not take

proper care of my padrone."

But Delarey was determined. He stripped off his clothes, put on his

bathing drawers, took up the net, and, carefully directed by the admiring

though protesting Gaspare, he waded into the sea.

For a moment he shuddered as the calm water rose round him. Then, English

fashion, he dipped under, with a splash that brought a roar of laughter

to him from the shore.

"Meglio così!" he cried, coming up again in the moonlight. "Adesso sto

bene!"

The plunge had made him suddenly feel tremendously young and triumphant,

reckless with a happiness that thrilled with audacity. As he waded out he

began to sing in a loud voice:

"Ciao, ciao, ciao,

Morettina bella ciao,

Prima di partire

Un bacio ti voglio da'."

Gaspare, who was hastily dressing by the boats, called out to him that

his singing would frighten away the fish, and he was obediently silent.

He imprisoned the song in his heart, but that went on singing bravely. As

he waded farther he felt splendid, as if he were a lord of life and of

the sea. The water, now warm to him, seemed to be embracing him as it

crept upward towards his throat. Nature was clasping him with amorous

arms. Nature was taking him for her own.

"Nature, nature!" he said to himself. "That's why I'm so gloriously happy

here, because I'm being right down natural."

His mind made an abrupt turn, like a coursed hare, and he suddenly found

himself thinking of the night in London, when he had sat in the

restaurant with Hermione and Artois and listened to their talk,

reverently listened. Now, as the net tugged at his hand, influenced by

the resisting sea, that talk, as he remembered it, struck him as

unnatural, as useless, and the thoughts which he had then admired and

wondered at, as complicated and extraordinary. Something in him said,

"That's all unnatural." The touch of the water about his body, the light

of the moon upon him, the breath of the air in his wet face drove out his

reverence for what he called "intellectuality," and something savage got

hold of his soul and shook it, as if to wake up the sleeping self within

him, the self that was Sicilian.

As he waded in the water, coming ever nearer to the jagged rocks that

shut out from his sight the wide sea and something else, he felt as if

thinking and living were in opposition, as if the one were destructive of

the other; and the desire to be clever, to be talented, which had often

assailed him since he had known, and especially since he had loved,

Hermione, died out of him, and he found himself vaguely pitying Artois,

and almost despising the career and the fame of a writer. What did

thinking matter? The great thing was to live, to live with your body,

out-of-doors, close to nature, somewhat as the savages live. When he

waded to shore for the first time, and saw, as the net was hauled in, the

fish he had caught gleaming and leaping in the light, he could have

shouted like a boy.

He seized the net once more, but Gaspare, now clothed, took hold of him

by the arm with a familiarity that had in it nothing disrespectful.

"Signore, basta, basta! Giulio will go in now."

"Si! si!" cried Giulio, beginning to tug at his waistcoat buttons.

"Once more, Gaspare!" said Maurice. "Only once!"

"But if you take cold, signorino, the signora--"

"I sha'n't catch cold. Only once!"

He broke away, laughing, from Gaspare, and was swiftly in the sea. The

Sicilians looked at him with admiration.

"E' veramente più Siciliano di noi!" exclaimed Nito.

The others murmured their assent. Gaspare glowed with pride in his pupil.

"I shall make the signore one of us," he said, as he deftly let out the

coils of the net.

"But how long is he going to stay?" asked Nito. "Will he not soon be

going back to his own country?"

For a moment Gaspare's countenance fell.

"When the heat comes," he began, doubtfully. Then he cheered up.

"Perhaps he will take me with him to England," he said.

This time Maurice waded with the net into the shadow of the rocks out of

the light of the moon. The night was waning, and a slight chill began to

creep into the air. A little breeze, too, sighed over the sea, ruffling

its surface, died away, then softly came again. As he moved into the

darkness Maurice was conscious that the buoyancy of his spirits received

a slight check. The night seemed suddenly to have changed, to have

become more mysterious. He began to feel its mystery now, to be aware of

the strangeness of being out in the sea alone at such an hour. Upon the

shore he saw the forms of his companions, but they looked remote and

phantom-like. He did not hear their voices. Perhaps the slow approach of

dawn was beginning to affect them, and the little wind that was springing

up chilled their merriment and struck them to silence. Before him the

dense blackness of the rocks rose like a grotesque wall carved in

diabolic shapes, and as he stared at these shapes he had an odd fancy

that they were living things, and that they were watching him at his

labor. He could not get this idea, that he was being watched, out of his

head, and for a moment he forgot about the fish, and stood still, staring

at the monsters, whose bulky forms reared themselves up into the

moonlight from which they banished him.

"Signore! Signorino!"

There came to him a cry of protest from the shore. He started, moved

forward with the net, and went under water. He had stepped into a deep

hole. Still holding fast to the net, he came up to the surface, shook his

head, and struck out. As he did so he heard another cry, sharp yet

musical. But this cry did not come from the beach where his companions

were gathered. It rose from the blackness of the rocks close to him, and

it sounded like the cry of a woman. He winked his eyes to get the water

out of them, and swam for the rocks, heedless of his duty as a fisherman.

But the net impeded him, and again there was a shout from the shore:

"Signorino! Signorino! E' pazzo Lei?"

Reluctantly he turned and swam back to the shallow water. But when his

feet touched bottom he stood still. That cry of a woman from the mystery

of the rocks had startled, had fascinated his ears. Suddenly he

remembered that he must be near to that Casa delle Sirene, whose little

light he had seen from the terrace of the priest's house on his first

evening in Sicily. He longed to hear that woman's voice again. For a

moment he thought of it as the voice of a siren, of one of those beings

of enchantment who lure men on to their destruction, and he listened

eagerly, almost passionately, while the ruffled water eddied softly about

his breast. But no music stole to him from the blackness of the rocks,

and at last he turned slowly and waded to the shore.

He was met with merry protests. Nito declared that the net had nearly

been torn out of his hands. Gaspare, half undressed to go to his rescue,

anxiously inquired if he had come to any harm. The rocks were sharp as

razors near the point, and he might have cut himself to pieces upon them.

He apologized to Nito and showed Gaspare that he was uninjured. Then,

while the others began to count the fish, he went to the boats to put on

his clothes, accompanied by Gaspare.

"Why did you swim towards the rocks, signorino?" asked the boy, looking

at him with a sharp curiosity.

Delarey hesitated for a moment. He was inclined, he scarcely knew why, to

keep silence about the cry he had heard. Yet he wanted to ask Gaspare

something.

"Gaspare," he said, at last, as they reached the boats, "was any one of

you on the rocks over there just now?"

He had forgotten to number his companions when he reached the shore.

Perhaps one was missing, and had wandered towards the point to watch him

fishing.

"No, signore. Why do you ask?"

Again Delarey hesitated. Then he said:

"I heard some one call out to me there."

He began to rub his wet body with a towel.

"Call! What did they call?"

"Nothing; no words. Some one cried out."

"At this hour! Who should be there, signore?"

The action of the rough towel upon his body brought a glow of warmth to

Delarey, and the sense of mystery began to depart from his mind.

"Perhaps it was a fisherman," he said.

"They do not fish from there, signore. It must have been me you heard.

When you went under the water I cried out. Drink some wine, signorino."

He held a glass full of wine to Delarey's lips. Delarey drank.

"But you've got a man's voice, Gaspare!" he said, putting down the glass

and beginning to get into his clothes.

"Per Dio! Would you have me squeak like a woman, signore?"

Delarey laughed and said no more. But he knew it was not Gaspare's voice

he had heard.

The net was drawn up now for the last time, and as soon as Delarey had

dressed they set out to walk to the caves on the farther side of the

rocks, where they meant to sleep till Carmela was about and ready to make

the frittura. To reach them they had to clamber up from the beach to the

Messina road, mount a hill, and descend to the Caffè Berardi, a small,

isolated shanty which stood close to the sea, and was used in summer-time

by bathers who wanted refreshment. Nito and the rest walked on in front,

and Delarey followed a few paces behind with Gaspare. When they reached

the summit of the hill a great sweep of open sea was disclosed to their

view, stretching away to the Straits of Messina, and bounded in the far

distance by the vague outlines of the Calabrian Mountains. Here the wind

met them more sharply, and below them on the pebbles by the caffè they

could see the foam of breaking waves. But to the right, and nearer to

them, the sea was still as an inland pool, guarded by the tree-covered

hump of land on which stood the house of the sirens. This hump, which

would have been an islet but for the narrow wall of sheer rock which

joined it to the main-land, ran out into the sea parallel to the road.

On the height, Delarey paused for a moment, as if to look at the wide

view, dim and ethereal, under the dying moon.

"Is that Calabria?" he asked.

"Si, signore. And there is the caffè. The caves are beyond it. You cannot

see them from here. But you are not looking, signorino!"

The boy's quick eyes had noticed that Delarey was glancing towards the

tangle of trees, among which was visible a small section of the gray wall

of the house of the sirens.

"How calm the sea is there!" Delarey said, swiftly.

"Si, signore. That is where you can see the light in the window from our

terrace."

"There's no light now."

"How should there be? They are asleep. Andiamo?"

They followed the others, who were now out of sight. When they reached

the caves, Nito and the boys had already flung themselves down upon the

sand and were sleeping. Gaspare scooped out a hollow for Delarey, rolled

up his jacket as a pillow for his padrone's head, murmured a "Buon

riposo!" lay down near him, buried his face in his arms, and almost

directly began to breathe with a regularity that told its tale of

youthful, happy slumber.

It was dark in the cave and quite warm. The sand made a comfortable bed,

and Delarey was luxuriously tired after the long walk and the wading in

the sea. When he lay down he thought that he, too, would be asleep in a

moment, but sleep did not come to him, though he closed his eyes in

anticipation of it. His mind was busy in his weary body, and that little

cry of a woman still rang in his ears. He heard it like a song sung by a

mysterious voice in a place of mystery by the sea. Soon he opened his

eyes. Turning a little in the sand, away from his companions, he looked

out from the cave, across the sloping beach and the foam of the waves,

to the darkness of trees on the island. (So he called the place of the

siren's house to himself now, and always hereafter.) From the cave he

could not see the house, but only the trees, a formless, dim mass that

grew about it. The monotonous sound of wave after wave did not still the

cry in his ears, but mingled with it, as must have mingled with the song

of the sirens to Ulysses the murmur of breaking seas ever so long ago.

And he thought of a siren in the night stealing to a hidden place in the

rocks to watch him as he drew the net, breast high in the water. There

was romance in his mind to-night, new-born and strange. Sicily had put it

there with the wild sense of youth and freedom that still possessed him.

Something seemed to call him away from this cave of sleep, to bid his

tired body bestir itself once more. He looked at the dark forms of his

comrades, stretched in various attitudes of repose, and suddenly he knew

he could not sleep. He did not want to sleep. He wanted--what? He raised

himself to a sitting posture, then softly stood up, and with infinite

precaution stole out of the cave.

The coldness of the coming dawn took hold on him on the shore, and he saw

in the east a mysterious pallor that was not of the moon, and upon the

foam of the waves a light that was ghastly and that suggested infinite

weariness and sickness. But he did not say this to himself. He merely

felt that the night was quickly departing, and that he must hasten on his

errand before the day came.

He was going to search for the woman who had cried out to him in the sea.

And he felt as if she were a creature of the night, of the moon and of

the shadows, and as if he could never hope to find her in the glory of

the day.